


fabrications

by hatenoprincess



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Sexual Content, Memory Loss, Romance, this is sad fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-16
Updated: 2018-01-16
Packaged: 2019-03-05 14:48:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13390116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hatenoprincess/pseuds/hatenoprincess
Summary: A few months after defeating the Calamity, Link notices that his mind has begun fabricating memories in an effort to piece together his past and his relationship with the Princess of Hyrule.





	fabrications

Sometimes, when Link wakes, he finds he can’t tell if the images that haunt his sleep are real or not, if they  _happened_ or not. Realistic scenarios blurred the line between reality and a fabrication of his mind trying desperately to fill in the gaps between the now and the then. 

“Remember that time we went to Lurelin?” Link had asked a few months ago, in the midst of reminiscing and making quiet conversation.  Zelda’s eyes immediately left her book as she hesitated, looking at him strangely. 

No. She didn’t.

Link froze, convinced he’d heard her wrong. His stomach dropped. 

 _She’d never been to Lurelin before_ , she’d said. _She’d heard it was lovely._

The memory had come back a couple weeks prior as he’d been fishing, and it had been _so clear_ \- the two of them, sitting side by side on the pier and eating some fish he’d just caught and cooked up.  They were making a quick detour after the Spring of Courage, and she wanted to do some notes on the marine life found in the little coastal town. He remembered the salty taste in the air, the feel of the humidity on his skin, and the smell of her hair as the wind swept a lock near his face... it had been so  _real._

While there was nothing particularly special about it, the quiet peacefulness of the memory made it one of his favorites. He’d been eager to reminisce about it, ask about the seashells they collected and whatever happened to them, and maybe ask to take her on a new memory-making trip there in the near future. 

He couldn’t believe it just... never happened.

He told her this, and her heart broke. Zelda gently put the book down, and moved to kneel beside the chair he was in. 

“What other....  _memories_  do you have?” 

He didn’t know.  

 

* * *

 

They were up until dawn trying to sort through the jumbled mess of Link’s memories. Real, fake, somewhere in between - they’d tried for hours to smooth out the knots of his past. 

Save for some minor details, from what Zelda could tell the memories he’d recalled from the pictures on the Sheikah Slate seemed mostly accurate. His other memories were much more hit or miss - he was remembering big events that truly happened and precious little moments that just... hadn’t. Their lovely trip to Lurelin never happened, but a few memories that he thought came right before it, when they'd gone to the Spring of Courage and he told her about how he came to acquire the Master Sword, apparently did.

His general timeline, however, was a bit fuzzy. Memories, both new and old, were jumbled and off by months or miles; Zelda needed to rack carefully through her own timeline to make sure she hadn't mislead him. 

To both of their dismay, Zelda wasn’t able to confirm most of the memories about his family - about his little sister’s tenth birthday party and the Castletown ribbons he’d bought for her hair, or his uncle’s goat farm and a mean old goat named Taffy who would always chase him off their property. Those hurt the most to not know the truthfulness of, and Zelda couldn’t help but to feel a pit of guilt in her stomach for not getting to know Link better until the very end of their time a hundred years ago. His memories of his family were all but lost to the Calamity and the passage of time.  

She wished there was more she could do. 

 

* * *

 

He’d asked more than once if she was absolutely  _positive_  that her memory was fully intact, that a century hadn’t faded the edges of their history. He’d all but begged her to admit it wasn’t, to let him know that he wasn’t the only one who’d quite literally  _lost his mind._

She, teary-eyed and whimpering, regrettably told him that she knew she’d kept them, that she had nothing  _but_  those memories when she served her time with evil incarnate. 

She hated the way she could see his heart sink in the frown lines of his forehead and the sighs on his lips.   

   

* * *

 

From that night onwards, they made a pact - any time he had a memory come back to him, he was to bring it up to Zelda for confirmation as soon as possible. 

 

* * *

 

 A couple of days after the Lurelin memory incident, he’d crunched down a bit hard on his breakfast and recalled a memory he shared with Daruk. 

“Did I... did I eat a rock roast on a bet once, after we'd gone up to check on Rudania?” Link’s face scrunched up as he remembered the way his teeth had hurt as he tried desperately to chew the solid roast. Zelda couldn’t contain her giggles.

 “Yes. Yes you did. Daruk was quite impressed, might I add.” 

They laughed and laughed as Link recalled the bizarre sensation of eating solid earth with Goron Spice on top, and they smiled fondly in memory of their friend's rich, hearty laughter. 

 

* * *

 

Sometimes his memories weren’t actually memories, but little habits or opinions that he didn’t know the source of. 

He asked if he always whistled when he cooks, or if he’d always had a soft spot for stray dogs.  Zelda was thrilled to confirm that he'd always love apples and, yes, he could always tame any horse with enough soothing. 

For science, of course, she'd begun writing down each of the memories he'd "remembered." Painstakingly, she wrote down every detail he could remember about his affects before and after the memories. Surprisingly, they found some patterns in his recollections that helped him determine the truthfulness of his memories. 

His fabricated memories tended to be overly-realistic, and if he could recall sight and smell in detail, the memory was less likely to be true. Hyper-realistic colors and strong smells tended to be fabrications, his mind overcompensating for its lack of true memory. He was now weary of memories where he could remember the exact way that light glinted off the waters of ponds he remembered or if he could almost taste the scents in the fictional air. 

The real memories were much more subtle- they faded to black around the edges, but the dialogue tended to be more in depth. If the memory talked about previous events in context, it tended to be true. 

Of course there were some wildcards, but Link liked being able to brace himself with the potential that a heartwarming or enlightening memory wasn't true. While disheartening at times, it was easier if he went into the conversation with expectations. He liked that. 

Zelda, for her part, was happy to be partaking in any semblance of research. And if she could help her friend piece together his life, even better. 

 

* * *

 

Link hadn’t told her about his most recent memory. 

Just before daybreak, Link had awoken to a rumbling in his stomach. As he made his way out from his makeshift room under the stairs, he was surprised to see the princess asleep on their sofa. 

While she usually retires earlier than he, last night she was nose-deep in some book on ancient materials that he couldn’t pretend to comprehend. After he dozily nodded off a few times on the other end of the sofa, she bid him a farewell as he blearily slinked off to his bed. She must have fallen asleep while reading, as the book was open across her chest and her hair was still mostly made up from the day before.  

Slowly, and careful not to wake her, he gently pried the book from beneath her hands, marked the page, and then quietly snuck back to his room to snatch a blanket off of his cot. He settled it over her and she reacted almost instantly, grabbing the fabric and burrowing into its warmth. She sighed contentedly. 

The sight of her curling up in his blankets made his heart constrict, and the memory hit him like a guardian’s beam.   

  

 

* * *

 

_The two of them were on the floor of a room in the Hateno Inn in the earliest hours of the morning, under the covers of his makeshift bed._ _It was Zelda’s birthday, and they’d be heading up to the top of Mount Lanayru in a few hours._

_Zelda’s bed lay above them, unmade, but she had woken up in a nightmare’s panic about five minutes ago and crawled under the spare blankets with her knight for comfort._

_Mind dulled from sleep, he did not think to turn her away, to send her back up to her bed with propriety on his lips. Instead, he’d welcomed her into his arms and shushed her softly as she cried into his chest. Her sniffles died down slowly and he sleepily buried his nose into her hair, breathing her in._

_When she fully quieted, he asked her what she had been dreaming about._

_“The Calamity... Link, I saw the most terrible destruction. Hyrule was burning, the Champions were missing, and Link... you....”  
_

_She dissolved into sobs and buried her face into him. He brought a hand up, smoothing down her hair as her body shook._

_A whisper, now. “I dreamt that you died.” Her fingers tightened into his sleep shirt, afraid that if she let go, he might vanish. _She wiped at her eyes with her sleeve._  
_

_“Link, my last shot is on the mountain tomorrow morn,” she looked up at him with red-rimmed eyes. “I fear we won’t have much time past that.”_

_Her tears fell way to something that looked like courage._

_“Should the worst come to pass,” she sucked in a steadying breath,_ " _I want you to know that I love you.”_

_As Link was sure he was frozen still, she leaned up to kiss him._

_Their lips met in a clumsy first attempt, pushing together awkwardly and excitedly before eager giddiness slowly melted into saccharine, syrupy kisses that seemed to last for hours._

_Unwilling to fully let her go, but desperately needing to say the words, Link broke the kiss to whisper in her ear._

_“And I love you too. So unbelievably much”  
_

_His hot mouth on her neck made Zelda shiver, and Link shifted his body over hers under the guise of keeping her warm._    

  

 

* * *

 

It had been a week since the memory had come to him, and Link was still completely unsure as to what to do about it. He’d rushed out of the house after it, and doubled down on his training drills in an attempt to distract himself from the echo of her body wrapped around his and the sound of the words he'd held back thus far in this new life. 

For all their research suggested, this memory  _should be real._

There were no hyper-real colors, she’d spoken about real events in context, the edges of the memory faded into black just as most of his real-enough ones had. But he could remember in excruciating detail the way she smelled as he buried his nose in her neck, the sweet sounds she had made.. but certainly, if it were real, she would have brought it up by now? She could not have been hiding for months (well, technically a  _century)_  the fact that they’d done  _that._

Perhaps his...  _overactive_  imagination had constructed a simple fantasy about the girl he shared his life and home with, the girl he had developed feelings for. It had felt so special, so tender, that it couldn't be more than romantic wishful thinking. 

He couldn’t find a way to bring it up, unsure of what her answer would be if he asked her if they’d made love, unsure of what  _his_  answer would be if she asked him why his subconscious would create such an unbelievable scenario in the first place. 

 

* * *

 

Just as fireflies had began to make their first appearance of the night, Link and Zelda took a quiet walk around town.

Without really thinking or meaning to, they'd walked right through the town's center and passed the Hateno Inn. The nostalgia hit Link like a ton of bricks.

This was the only shot he was going to get. He took a deep breath and mustered up the courage to finally confirm the memory, to  _finally_  ask the details about their relationship before his slumber. 

“I had another memory earlier this week.” Her eyes lit up as she turned to him. “And I want to preface this with an apology if the memory is not true.”

Her eyes narrowed before they flickered to the Inn, and his heart swelled with hope that maybe,  _impossibly,_ this one might be real. 

“Before we went to Lanayru, did we...  make love?” Link stared at his boots, unwilling (or perhaps unable) to look her in the eye as he asked this. Link scratched the nape of his neck, cheeks burning when he remembered the phantom sensation of her nails doing the same. 

Her mouth dropped open.

“I had a memory in which we... made love. At the inn, there..” the words were sticky in his mouth, cautiously spoken as he bit back a wave of nerves that felt like nausea  “...before heading up to Mount Lanayru on your birthday.”

She stopped walking, color flushing her cheeks. She closed her mouth, then opened it as if to speak, then closed it again, sighing. 

“That one is real.” 

His eyes shot up and his heart soared. His relief at the truthfulness was short-lived, killed by the guilt that suddenly clouded her eyes. 

"I'm so sorry, Link. I.. didn't mean for you to find out this way. " 

Link’s eyebrows shot up. Zelda started rambling, her hand running through the front of her hair. 

"We had gone through so much, what with the Calamity, and then we came back here and your memories hadn't fully recovered and half the ones that  _did_ weren't even real, and I didn't want to burden you with my feelings after all this time, especially since you don't even remember them and I-"

"Zelda, stop." She was looking away, he grabbed her hands before he placed his hand on her chin and gently coaxed her to look at him. "I still love you so unbelievably much." 

She gasped, a jolt of recognition running through her. Her eyes met his, and they were suddenly a hundred years in the past, on the floor of the Hateno Inn, wrapped up in each other. 

He smiled softly before pressing his lips to hers. 

 

* * *

 

When it came to making love, his memory hadn't come close to comparing to the real thing. They'd scurried home, giggling like children and stealing kisses whenever they held eye contact for too long. After, they'd gone back downstairs to eat food. 

"Zelda, I was thinking," he was pacing near their table, as he does (and always has done) when he's anxious. Zelda set down her cup of tea, waiting on him to finish his thought. 

"Can you tell me the full story of our time before? I think it might help jog my memory, or at least, put things in a little more context." He scratched at the back of his head, before looking up at her. Zelda laughed, and then grabbed his hand before leading him over to the sofa. She let him go to run up the stairs and grab her journal and a blanket from their bed. 

"You know, we used to sit together and talk like this a lot before the Calamity. I like that it's something we still do after all of this time." 

She flipped open her journal in preparation for any new memories and pulled the blanket over them both, curling into his side. 

"So, where to begin?”

**Author's Note:**

> hi! come follow me on tumblr @tinysilentprincess
> 
> I am very open to constructive criticism on the plot/grammar/writing as I'm still learning the writing ropes. Hope you liked this one-shot. Thanks for reading! x


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